I’m back at Camont after a few days of piggy mayhem in the Basque Country. I know everyone wants to know about the name. But it’s complicated.

I think of myself as relatively well organized, a good communicator and “a people person” and Kate is triply so all those things. But even having Kate on my side on this project, my short-comings are laid bare. I realize what a dumbass I am. I really don’t know anything. I am a city mouse in pig’s clothing. But I am learning so much.

Every turn is a learning moment. If things were going smoothly I wouldn’t be learning about the complexity and nuances of the system I am trying to document. So bear with me while I try to explain this.

I arrived on Tuesday and after an overnight at Camont, we set off for the Basque Country. We had cheese sandwiches while we drove, and arrived a little after lunch to the breeding farm in Lasse. There, the younger M. Guenard, Julian Guenard met us. He knew we wanted to see piglets. And this is where our education began.

First we saw the progress they had made in accordance with the new European mandate about sow housing. I have not read these mandates but basically it required breeding farms to change their practice from keeping sows in individual stalls to being kept in groups with room to walk around in each group’s pen. That meant the downsizing of the sow population (because each pig needed more room) and the building of corrals. When we had visited in December they were just building the new pens. The senoir M. Guenard had worried at the expense and whether they would be able to support the farm with less sows. So by now, the first group of sows had been rehoused for a few weeks. Julian explained that at first there was conflict within the groups of about eight sows per corral. They establish a hierarchy and each one claimed a space in the pen that was her own. At one side of each corral were individual feeding stalls, each with it’s own trough. They were happy, and except for the occasional scuffle, rather calm and perhaps even peaceful. 

The first time I was in a confinement breeding farm (a farm where pigs are kept inside) the barn was filled with stall after stall of one sow each. The stalls were narrow in some cases they had a neck harness that restricted their movement. Friends, it wasn’t pretty. When we entered and switched on the lights the under-stimulated pigs would panic and squeal and yell. Stress on the pigs, stress on the caregivers. Stress is not good for anyone’s health.

Julian explained how it was hard at first, but now the pigs are happier. They aren’t panicky. They are healthier. And calm, happy pigs make a farmer’s life less stressful and so he is happy too. 

So then I asked my first stupid question: “What’s up with the spray paint on the sows?”

It turns out they keep track of the weigh of each sow and mark the ones that are underweigh and overweigh. Remember these are expectant mothers. And even though there are 500 of them (at various stages of pregnancy) to the six people who staff the farm, the sows are each hand fed. As Julian put it: “This is not a robo-farm.” Each pig is fed to it’s needs to maintain the best possible health. A properly fed pig is less likely to be sick. She’s more likely to have healthy piglets: not too big as to cause difficult delivery; not so small as to endanger the newborns’ viability. 80% of the overhead of this kind of operation is pig feed. It’s where many farms skimp. Cheap food. But if a pig is well nourished there is no need for medications. And healthy mothers mean healthy piglets.

  “Oh wow,” I thought. Oh wow.

Next we went to the birthing sheds.